 | Diary Navigation:
|
November 2, 2004
Where we are now (11-2-04)
Time to update, I don't want iParenting to shut my diary down! Although, just in case that ever happens, I went through and saved all of my diary entries to my computer (I've done this before but I lost them in the computer crash) and printed hard copies out too. I'm going to put them in a notebook--I think it will be fun to have everything on paper to read later. :) Except I've written so many entries in the past 2 years that my printer ran out of ink trying to print them all, LOL! This is my 56th entry. Wow.
It's been a while since I've written so I thought I would start with an update on each of us.
Let's start with the littlest person first--Lily! She is almost 6 months old now, can you believe it? She has been doing so many new things that I'm not sure I can remember everything. She loves to sit and play with toys and can entertain herself really well that way. If something gets a little too far from her, she stretches waaaaaay forward and onto her hands and knees she goes! Sometimes she balances for a few minutes, sometimes she immediately splats onto her stomach. A few times in the last week she has held the hands and knees position and begun to rock back and forth like they do before they learn to crawl. How soon until she actually crawls? Yikes! I'm looking forward to this milestone with healthy doses of both excitement and dread, LOL.
Lily also got her first 2 teeth over the last 2 weeks, and immediately began demanding solid food to eat with them! So much for my idea that I would wait as long as possible to start solids... The day after she got her first tooth, I was giving her a little taste of ice cream as I often do (ice cream was both of my children's first food, LOL) and when I took the spoon away she threw a fit! I gave her another bite and realized that she wasn't pushing it all our of her mouth anymore, but was really trying to eat it. So I sat her in the highchair and tried some sweet potatoes--a hit!
In true second child form, Lily's introduction to solids has been a bit, umm, unstructured shall we say? LOL. None of that organized introduction of a new food every 3 days with careful notes about what she thinks of it like we did with Aden... Lily pretty much gets to eat whatever she can get into her mouth and gum to death. So far that includes traditional beginning baby foods such as pureed sweet potato, carrots, peas, bananas, and rice cereal, more advanced baby foods like zwieback toast, veggie-flavored “wagon wheels,” and cheerios, and slightly untraditional baby foods like ice cream, pizza crust, flan, breadsticks, biscuits, and french fries. :P But on a positive note, she gets to feed herself so often that her pincher grasp is already starting to develop! It’s been really neat to watch her beginning to modify her raking motion into a more subtle motion that mainly involves her thumb and first finger. She doesn’t quite have it but she’s close.
When Lily was teething she was so cranky! Hyland’s Teething Tablets have really been a lifesaver with her. Now that the first two teeth are through her mood has greatly improved. She is happy and smiley again, always giving hugs and kisses (well, to me at least, she is a little more stingy about giving them to Derek, LOL), babbling a lot more and even throwing some consonant sounds around. And she is also sleeping so much better! We finally have some kind of routine to our day. Either she sleeps really late in the morning (10:00 is average) or if she gets up earlier she takes a short nap within an hour or two. Then she nurses to sleep after lunch and takes a really long nap, often 2-3 hours. Then she takes a short nap in the late evening around 7:00 or 8:00 and goes to bed by 10:00 or 11:00. Nighttime wakings… well, we won’t go there because I honestly don’t even know how often or when she wakes up. It seems like we are all getting more sleep than we did a few weeks ago, but I find myself much less concerned with nighttime nursing and “sleeping through the night” than I was with Aden. It’s nice not to worry about it!
We had a really nice Halloween. Lily was a pink leopard and Aden was a duck. They both had adorable costumes. I can’t wait to get our film developed so I can post pictures on the website! We went trick-or-treating twice. On Friday we walked around this little shopping district near our house, and then on Sunday we walked around our neighborhood. We’ve got plenty of candy to keep Derek and I happy for quite a while.. oh wait, is that candy supposed to be for the Aden? ;)
After months of struggling with Aden and wondering what kind of evil alien had taken over his body (LOL) my sweet little boy is finally back! I am really enjoying his company now and having so much fun with him again. I don’t know what changed, but within the last few weeks I’ve begun to notice that I’m not at odds with him so much, I’m not always on the verge of yelling or losing my temper… we’re smiling and laughing together a lot more, cuddling and giving hugs and saying “I love you”… it is wonderful!
His imagination has really taken off too. His make-believe games are much more elaborate and realistic now. Trains are still one of his favorite toys, and I’ve noticed that there is a much greater social context to his play with them—before, the trains were racing or crashing or whatever, but now there are mom and dad and baby trains, they talk to each other about how they’re feeling, etc. It’s really cute. :) He also was so hilarious at lunch today. He announced to me that he had, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10” babies in his tummy and began telling me where all of his babies would sleep once they were born. One would sleep with him of course, another on his train table, another on the dining room table… and then he told me he would feed them all with bottles. This surprised me a little so I asked if maybe his babies would need mama milk? He said, “Well, I just can’t nurse them” and pulled up his shirt to explain that he didn’t have mama milk. So I agreed that the babies would need bottles, but what would they drink in their bottles? He informed me that I was going to pump mama milk for all the babies’ bottles! LOL!
One last little thing to brag about… Aden is so interested in words and reading, and can read several words on sight (zoo, Aden, Lily plus maybe the names of a few trains) and if you name a letter he can usually think of several words that start with that letter. He has two phonics books and has quickly learned which letters and endings go together to make words. He loves the rhyming aspect of it especially. All of this, and I haven’t pushed any of it on him or consciously taught it to him—it is all whatever he learns or asks about on his own. It really amazes me. In his case I’ve decided that some amount of TV (shows like Sesame Street and Between the Lions especially) is a good thing because the shows often introduce concepts that are very interesting and appropriate for him, but which I wouldn’t have even thought to mention yet! So yes, we watch a lot of PBS, and I do not feel guilty about it at all.
As I’ve been writing this I keep checking the election results. I’m not sure whether I want to stay up until it’s decided, or whether I’d rather not know… and when will we really know, anyway? It’s a bit disheartening, really. Am I the only one who feels this way?
Ugh… I was going to write more but I’m suddenly very tired and I still haven’t shaken the headache that I’ve had all day. I had a mole removed from my temple this morning and I think the numbing shots didn’t quite agree with me. Now I have three stitches in my head and look kind of tough, LOL. But it’s beginning to throb and sting and I’m becoming a bit loopy! I thought if I wrote enough than maybe the electoral vote count would have budged from 269 Bush to 207 Kerry—hey, if Kerry wins every other state we could still have that tie that all the gloom-and-doom forecasters have been predicting! But I think I’ll be waiting for quite a while, and I need the sleep more, obviously.
Take care, everyone!
Tara
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
